I'm a professional scavenger making a living selling curbside garbage. This blog details my finds and sales. It also acts as an archive for things beautiful and historic that would otherwise have been destroyed.

Weird work / garbology pt.4

I recently did an interview with the folks at Weird Work. I usually hate the sound of my own voice but I was pretty happy with how it turned out! I had a good time talking with interviewer Sam Balter, and I think the episode does a great job detailing my work in a succinct and light-hearted way. Listen to it here, or find it on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. It’s about 23 minutes long.

I hired a friend the other day using some of the money donated by you readers (thank you again!). She helped me take some of the photos for this post (including the glamour shot above) as well as the photos of the vintage dresses from another recent post. I’ll probably hire her again next week as my garage has officially become a complete disaster zone – there’s lots of pictures to be taken, and lots of stuff that needs to be organized.

I haven’t found anything at this spot over the past few weeks, but I’m optimistic that maybe it’ll produce more quality junk sometime soon. I can see some black garbage bags sitting just inside the front window, so someone just needs to bring them out to the curb.

Vintage lovers should love this post – it features all kinds of awesome old junk. Those cat salt and pepper shakers are made of the same type of thin plastic as the Aunt Jemima shaker from a few posts back. That plastic is pretty fragile, so the cats were lucky to survive their trip to the black garbage bag. The angry pickle shaker is destined for a friend of mine who matches it perfectly.

I always enjoy finding button collections. Here’s the contents of that bag in the first picture spread across three of those tin toy platters. Zoom in to see if there’s any you like! You’ll have to come to my yard sale to buy any though.

As usual there was a bit of miscellanea mixed in with the buttons. Here we have a cool pair of cufflinks, an amusement token of some kind, a squished 1938 penny, three WWII era buttons, and a Catholic charm.

I found some nice Fire King stuff including that sugar dish above (I also have the lid). Below you’ll see a couple of the matching cups. Those goggles at the bottom right are unusual, have you seen anything like them before?

A friend made a candle inside that Truro Nova Scotia cup, which was made in 1960 to celebrate the city’s bicentennial. Those old Corneli pizza mugs are great restaurant ware – on the bottom of each is marked “Maddock Ultra Vitrified, Made in England.” Corneli’s opened in 1960, so perhaps these mugs are from the early days of the restaurant. The restaurant is still around today – impressive longevity considering the industry.

There’s another old transistor radio battery on the right. It’ll end up on eBay at some point, after I accumulate a larger collection. At top left is a liquor permit issued in Amherst Nova Scotia in 1950.

Here we have a cute framed panda (which seems to be painted on foam), a collection of swizzle sticks, a deck of nudie cards, a Labatt 50 table lighter, more Red Rose figurines, and lots of other stuff. Zoom in for a closer look!

Here’s a few more Red Rose tea card albums, a postcard from Morrissey Rock NB, and an old beaded purse.

Lots of salt and peppers shakers here! There’s also a couple Queen Elizabeth trading cards, an Avon perfume bottle made to look like a Coleman lamp, a skeleton key, a pin from the Cuban Pavillion of Expo 67, a rosary, and a 1955 magazine titled “Annales de Notre-Dame de L’Assomption.”

Lots of fun junk in here! This person must have liked kickboxing, as the program at top right is the second I found at this spot. This one is from a fight in Paquetville NB, and also doubled as an hommage to hometown hero Jean Yves Theriault.

I don’t think anything in this post is particularly valuable, but I think a lot of it will sell for between 50 cents and 5$ at a yard sale. That can add up pretty fast!

I’ll write at least one more post in this series. Hopefully more, if those bags appear on the curb sometime in the near future and contain some goodies!

Otherwise, my luck has been only okay recently. NDG has been my most productive neighbourhood of late. I found myself in Ville St Laurent on Thursday – I saved a bag of buttons and other crafting stuff, a vintage “à louer” sign from the era of the 7 digit phone number, and a Last Supper print with a super kitsch 60s frame. I also saved some cool stuff in Ahunstic, and met some homeowners who were more than happy to give me some of their old junk. Maybe I’ll share that story in more detail on a future post.

Here’s hoping there’s a warm weekend coming up in March. I’d like to get a little yard sale in, even if it’s not the “big one” at my garage. I need the cash, and would love to unload some of my treasures. I’ll consider pulling the trigger if the weather is calling for full sun, no wind, and a high of at least 6 degrees.

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23 thoughts on “Weird work / garbology pt.4”

Thank you for another great post. I will listen to the interview later this weekend. I love this sentence: ‘I can see some black garbage bags sitting just inside the front window, so someone just needs to bring them out to the curb.” So enticing… Also, who would ever imagine that “an Avon perfume bottle (would be) made to look like a Coleman lamp”?! I always learn something new about human beings when I read one of your posts. And hurrah for a “homeowners who (are) more than happy to give (you) some of their old junk”!

Super interview! Some of the questions I’ve had were answered. May I ask one that wasn’t? I’m wondering how much cleaning of items that you end up having to do. Is stuff mostly good enough to re-sell? Seems like it would be a lot of work if you had to clean much of it.

I keep seeing things in your photos here and there that I recognize. The latest one is the turtle with the gold head – I remember my mom buying me that perfume when I was young. It was such a cool bottle for an animal lover. (photo 9)

There’s not much cleaning involved really. A lot of this stuff is just going from drawers to bags, and it’s pretty rare that cool stuff will get mixed in with the gross stuff (ie: kitchen scraps, kitty litter, etc). When that does happen, I’ll give it a wash. That being said, I might quickly rub some of these pieces with a microfibre cloth and some soapy water to make it sparkle for the yard sale, and I’ll clean the things I list on eBay to make sure they look good in the photos.

I think that turtle might have been another Avon perfume. They sure were good at making those kitschy bottles!

Thanks for the reply, and yes, I’m sure that was an Avon bottle. In many communities around here (Nova Scotia) the Avon Lady was not only a source of income for the woman selling but also a nice way for women to socialize and get products they wouldn’t find in the local stores. I have fond memories of the things my mom ordered and I still have my favourite, a peach-scented-cream container in the shape of a basket of peaches. It still smells faintly of the original scent after forty plus years 🙂

Those sun cufflinks are nice … are they brass?
In photo #6 … looks like somebody sawed the newel cap off a (probably) patio banister.
Whoa … a skeleton key! Can you save it for me?
What’s that speckled blue ball in the last pic … a marble?

Thanks, lol. The podcast guys wanted a picture but all the ones I had felt dated, so I went out to Rosemont with my friend to get some shots of me with the trash. I took a bad route getting there, and we found this aesthetically pleasing pile just before sundown. The pics turned out great though!

I’m not sure what those are made of. I have a couple of those newel things, hopefully someone wants them at a yard sale. I have a lot of skeleton keys at this point, and that is indeed a marble.

The growing trend of minimalism is very bad.It is why so much good stuff is thrown out and why so much landfill space is filled with reusable stuff.(It is a good idea to buy less,but junking good stuff is a bad,bad idea.)

Hopefully soon! That might be a good idea, but I still have lots of stuff to list even after a winter of mostly focusing on the online stuff, so if I can unload them at a yard sale I will. There’s only so much time I can spending listing things on eBay. And sometimes grouped lots don’t work that well, like that collection of miniature figurines I sold a while back for 10$. That ended up being a total waste of time on my part, as I would have made more at a yard sale and saved myself a bunch of effort.

Okay as vintage is my bailiwick…
Husky tin trailer and those goggles need research as there’s money there.
Restaurant cups are hot right now.
Elephants worth 18. Investigate the Native American tin whistle (??)
Pixie salt and peppers are about 15. People love them
Love bug frame (??) 10 as I’d the umbrella handle with drops
Those pups on a box wall pockets?? 15 each
And finally check that silverware…Bakelite

Thanks for the input! I’ll definitely look more into those goggles, I’m only now appreciating how cool they are. Plus, the fact that I haven’t seen any like them before is a good sign. The whistle might be worth eBaying, especially since it’s flat and I can send it out via lettermail (way cheaper than usual). The other stuff is great yard sale material. I think the silverware is celluloid, or maybe worn out French Ivory, I forget.

Just a note on those tiny glass bottles– I happened to buy a lot of them at a senior center rummage sale, ended up listing them at $7 each on eBay (some higher if larger, with cork, etc.) and amazingly they have all sold but one, even tho some are made in China! Not sure if collectors or what, but here is a link to my last one. We do include USA shipping, so not a huge profit, but we paid a few cents apiece each, so profit is profit!